


This Dream Isn't Real

by Senket



Series: The Winning Scenario [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Marriage, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 16:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senket/pseuds/Senket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love has never been easy for Jim. Why would he have ever expected it to change?</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Dream Isn't Real

i. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of a kiss and he’s already crying before he even realizes it was just a dream.

ii. His eyes are crusted shut with mucus, the sharp metallic tang of blood in his mouth- but if his eyes are closed at least he won’t realize the blood is green. No, wait. Apparently his tongue knows the difference between iron and copper.

iii. Drinking to forget never made sense to him. He got drunk to go to sleep. Forget? Not even in his dreams.

iv. ‘Jim.’ He shivers, whimpers, curls on his side. ‘Jimmy, I love you baby.’ Even at eight and feverishly sick, he knows he’s hallucinating the fingers through his hair. Winona Kirk hasn’t walked through his door in nineteen months.

v. Jim slumps, his shoulders pressing into the side of Bones’s bed. “Marriage is stupid,” slurs Leonard McCoy, stretched out on the regulation cot with a hand dangling to the floor, practically drooling on his pillow. “If I nev’r have sex again it’ll be better than goin’ through another fuckin’ marriage again.” He almost rolls off, squirming. Jim catches him in the hip with his shoulder, gently nudges him back up and takes another shot of whiskey. ” ‘N anoth’r thing, I hate relationships. They jus’ suck.” It burns on the way down. He doesn’t say anything about it. Why bother? Bones is on a roll, he doesn’t need help. Doesn’t need Jim. So there’s that.

vi. “Captain, I believe that regulations would frown upon such an activity.” “Aw, come on, Spock! It’ll be a getting-to-know-you thing. So we can mesh better as captain and commander. Completely logical.” Spock’s eyebrow quirks, and not in the way it does before he declares something to be fascinating. It looks remarkably like the face he’d made the first time he found Scotty and Chekov drinking everyone else under the table. “That may be so, captain, but I already have plans.” Far more interesting plans, no doubt. “Ah. Well. Have fun with them, then!” He claps Spock on the shoulders- the man regards him for a moment longer, his mouth thinning slightly, before he turns on the spot and strides away. Jim can’t seem to wipe the stupid fucking smile off his face, as if he has lockjaw or something, standing there without moving with nowhere to go.

vii. He never forgets, not even in his dreams.

viii. “Hey,” he says softly in the almost-silence, his tongue thick as he lulls, shoulder against the wall and knees pulled up to his chest. “Remember when you said you’d rather never have sex again then get married a second time?” He’s laughing because that’s all that there’s left for him to do, bubbly little hiccups that tear their way out. Bones huffs, wiping the trail of bourbon from the corner of his mouth. “Changed my mind, didn’t I?” he mumbles, frowning at his empty glass. “Sure did!” Jim answers back, too quick and too loud. His eyes are bright, unbearably bright, but nobody’s looking, nobody ever does.

ix. “Jim.” “Spock?” “Your ribbon is-” “Oh, sorry.” He goes absolutely still when Spock steps into his space to straighten the decoration, readjusting Jim’s golden braid over his shoulder. The brittle smile of his face feel familiar, glued in place, but Spock doesn’t notice. The Commander seems to have other things on his mind,

x. “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” he says, because he’s the captain, and this is the captain’s responsibility. No, not his responsibility, his privilege. His pleasure. Right. He looks out on his crew and he knows something in him is screaming at them to say something, anything. The silence buzzes in his ears and he struggles around the shape of the next words he will have to have the pleasure of speaking.

xi. His dreams are vaguest when he’s between them. Bones’s hands are too professional and Spock’s barely more than a ghost’s touch. The sounds of their voices are the most solid, because he knows what they sound like, warm and loving- except when it reaches his name, formless and distant: he doesn’t know its shape in that tone of voice, he’s heard ‘Spock’ and ‘Leonard’ but never ‘Jim.’ Some things he can’t conjure. He never forgets, not even in dreams, but you can’t remember something you’ve never seen, never heard, never felt.


End file.
